“You don't say!” The heads consulted.
“Is this the Saratoga?”
“What? The Saratoga lies two hundred yards astern of us.”
“Captain Benson?”
“What? Aye, Cap'n Benson.” lanterns traveled and gathered to the stern of the ship to watch us move away. They looked like a cluster of dim stars in the mist.
“Ahoy!” the voice cried after us, and we stopped rowing. “Are you Ben Cree?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I'll be dished!”
And here is evidently where this story ends, since it is not a biography; for a story should know its own right beginning and end, just as a biography should not maunder over neighboring generations. The rest is only coming aboard the Saratoga—where I had a dim, weary notion of familiar faces, and went to sleep in a bunk, and woke to see Uncle Benson standing over me, very prim and natty. “Well, Bennie!” he said, “it seems to me you've been out pretty late nights.” And I had slept near a dozen hours, while the Monitor and the Merrimac were rubbing the muzzles of their cannon together, in plain sight from the Saratoga's deck, making a mess of naval warfare.
Calhoun afterwards went off and enlisted, and fell in some Western fighting. Cavarly I have seen since, indeed not so long ago, and shaken hands with quite friendly, and Ben Cree has worn a captain's title these years and has wondered whether he ever deserved it.